The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

I nodded.

  “Take me through everything you can remember from this morning, okay?”

  I narrated the details of picking up Owen and talking with Snacker. The linens had been delivered, I said. Owen had used the office for faxing. Finally, I described the gruesome discovery of Leandra’s body. I consciously opted to avoid mentioning the lines of cocaine I’d seen in the bathroom, and I said nothing of my suspicion that not all the employees here were legal residents of the U.S.

  “Tell me why Owen’s truck was parked here overnight. And did you know Leandra well? Were Owen and Leandra involved?”

  I explained that Adrianna was pregnant and went on to say that because she’d been exhausted last night, she’d wanted Owen to drive her home. He’d done what Adrianna asked, and then he’d walked to his nearby apartment. In response to the question of whether I’d known Leandra well, I said no. I added that she’d been involved with Gavin Seymour, who’d seemed to be crazy about her. No, there was no relationship between Owen and Leandra. Owen was going to marry Adrianna. Just because Ade and Snacker had had a meaningless fling a while back didn’t mean that my friends weren’t perfect for each other! I stressed that no one should listen to anything Snacker had to say about Owen, because Snacker was not his biggest fan. As I didn’t say aloud, I resented the implication that Owen had had anything to do with the murder. Instead of saying outright that Owen shouldn’t be treated as a suspect, I emphasized his loyalty to Adrianna. I didn’t say this aloud, either, but if Owen had been going to kill someone, it would’ve been Snacker! “Owen was the one who wanted me to see his truck,” I said. “It’s not like he was hiding it from me.”

  Detective Waters continued her questions. “Was Leandra involved with anyone before Gavin? While she was with Gavin?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I knew her from spending time here because of Josh, but we weren’t close. Not by any means.”

  “Gavin is a handsome man, don’t you think? There must have been other women who were interested in him.”

  “Probably,” I said. Women who could’ve killed Leandra to get a shot at him? Obviously Isabelle’s harmless crush didn’t count, and I certainly didn’t want to bring up her name. “I’m sure he’s got tons of women all over him, but I don’t know of anyone specific.”

  After another twenty-five minutes in which I described my observation of the linen deliveryman and gave a step-by-step description of finding the body and calling 911, I was done. I hoped I hadn’t said anything to implicate Owen. Or Snacker. Had I given the impression that Snacker despised Owen so much he could have plopped a dead body in Owen’s truck to frame him?

  Josh and Snacker stood together, both increasingly irritated that they couldn’t get into the kitchen. Owen stood with them but was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “It’s not like anyone got poisoned, right?” complained Snacker. “Everything probably happened in the alley and Owen’s truck, not in the restaurant and certainly not in our kitchen.” Snacker was taking every opportunity to point out Owen’s connection to this crime.

  “The thing is, we don’t know how Leandra died. There were red marks on her neck, but there wasn’t any blood, right? Did you see any?” I asked.

  “No,” Snacker admitted.

  “Her death just couldn’t have been natural. It’s not like she suddenly felt ill, wandered into an unlocked fish truck, shut the door, and died.” I paused. “At least that’s not very likely.”

  “Maybe she killed herself,” Josh suggested.

  I rolled my eyes. “In a fish truck?”

  Josh looked over my shoulder. “I’m up, I guess.” He left to be grilled by Detective Waters. Owen finally decided to call Adrianna. Predictably, Snacker felt the urge to flirt with beautiful Blythe. And when Snacker felt an urge, he always succumbed to it.

  Gavin sat alone. Ever the social work student, I decided that it was no time for him to be by himself. Consequently, I pulled out a chair, sat down, and adopted my best therapist posture, legs and arms uncrossed and relaxed, ready to receive what the client had to say.

  Simmer’s owner looked at me sadly, blew his nose, and reached for a glass he’d managed to sneak from the bar. I could smell the alcohol from my chair. “I really, really cared about Leandra. I’m not sure we were in love yet, but we were definitely heading there.” He blew his nose again and wiped his sleeve across his eyes. “And to top it all off, this could really hurt Simmer. I’ve got great plans for all of us. I know we’ve got a few kinks to iron out, but the seminars I’ve been attending on restaurant management all say that the staff may take a while to be trained properly. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have exact methods for taking inventory and keeping track of everything. It might seem like petty stuff, but it’s all about crunching numbers. There are so many ways to lose money that we’ve got to be on top of everything.”

  Gavin was talking more to himself than to me. He was, I thought, struggling to focus on anything but his girlfriend’s murder. Denial. Typical defense mechanism. And a helpful one in getting him through this crisis. So I wasn’t worried about Gavin’s mental health. Simmer’s finances didn’t worry me, either. I assumed that the servers’ hourly rate was pretty low—it always is—so Gavin himself wasn’t losing a lot of money by overscheduling the front-of-the-house staff, whose principal source of income was tips. What really concerned me about Simmer was what Wade had described: namely, the effect of Gavin’s number crunching and management efforts on the servers’ tips and on the morale of everyone who worked at Simmer.

  Gavin suddenly switched to speaking directly to me. “And you know what? Josh is the best chef around. Never mind what anyone says. What does a GM know about food or running a kitchen anyhow?”

  Huh? I thought Wade really liked Josh. More often than I could remember, I’d heard the GM gush about how delicious Josh’s specials were, how hard Josh worked, and how great it was to have an executive chef of his caliber at Simmer. Now, come to find out, Wade had been bad-mouthing Josh to Gavin? The hypocrite! Instead of plastering his hair with all that gel, he should’ve used oily, greasy goo so he’d look like the slimeball he was.

  Gavin took a large gulp from his glass. “We ought to be open today. Not only can we not afford to be closed, but Leandra knew how much this place meant to me. I know she’d want us to be open. What the hell happened, anyway? Leandra shouldn’t have been alone. What was she doing? Where was everyone? It was Wade and Kevin who closed last night, I think. I think that’s who it was.”

  “That’s what I heard. Would it help you to talk to them?”

  “I’d feel better knowing that they locked up and that nothing happened to Leandra in the restaurant. I’ll never forgive myself if what put her in danger was a security issue here.”

  Gavin beckoned to his GM and his bartender, who came over to the table. Both wore tight black Simmer shirts. The too-tan, too-well-groomed, oh-so-Newbury Street look they shared was out of keeping with a murder scene as well as with the time of day. Both of them were, I thought, creatures of the night. Wade, with his perfectly gelled hair, at least looked ready to face the day.

  Kevin had the same lean, muscular build Wade did, but Kevin was older than Wade—I guessed early thirties—with wide sideburns that ended in points midcheek and thick hair that had been slicked cleanly and firmly off his face. Kevin’s pointy sideburns weren’t meant for mornings, even for mornings in the artificial light of a restaurant, and his face was haggard. Kevin had some indefinable quality that made me feel a little embarrassed for him. He seemed to be getting too old to be shaping his sideburns and pouring drinks for Newbury Street’s young, rich crowd. Most of Simmer’s dining room customers were well over thirty, but the bar scene was always a young crowd. Maybe I was being unfair to Kevin; plenty of professional bartenders, servers, and hosts were out of their twenties. Perhaps he was trying too hard to fit in? Leandra said that Kevin had been shot down again the other night, and the thought of him hitting on barely legal
women was embarrassing. Even Leandra had seemed to feel bad for him.

  Wade leaned over and rested both hands on the table. “Everything was normal last night. Kevin and I were the last people here. We set the alarm, locked up, and left. Leandra left way before we did. We didn’t see or hear anything weird. Like I said, everything was normal.”

  “Maybe I should have put video surveillance cameras outside. Do you think that would’ve helped?”

  Kevin shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, we don’t even know what happened, really, but there’s no reason to think this could have been prevented.”

  “Gavin, man,” Wade said, “I know how hard this must be on you and on the restaurant. It’s rough on Josh, too. I mean, he’s so dedicated to you and Simmer. But it’s not your fault. Just, you know, let us know if we can do anything for you.”

  Gavin looked down and spoke in an almost inaudible whisper. “Leandra. She had so many friends from having worked at so many restaurants around Boston. Kevin, you and Leandra worked together before, right?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “And everyone here knew what a great person she was and appreciated all her contributions to Simmer’s success. She’s really going to be missed by a lot of people.”

  Although Wade and Kevin again nodded, Gavin didn’t get quite the passionate response he was seeking. Fortunately, he was too caught up in his grief to notice. From what I knew of Leandra, she’d been a far from congenial staff member. Not that she’d deserved to end up as she had. Still, I could see why her coworkers were having trouble voicing genuine sorrow.

  I excused myself and went over to intrude on Snacker’s flirting session with Blythe. What I walked in on turned out to be Blythe’s description of a term paper she’d written in college about feminist perspectives on pornography. “So there’s one school of feminist thought that decries all pornography as women selling their bodies as a commodity and sees pornography as totally degrading and belittling and all that. Another view is the one that supports a woman’s right to choose what she does. That view doesn’t necessarily approve of pornography but accepts a woman’s prerogative to make decisions about what she does. And the third view actually argues that pornography can be beneficial and empowering to women.”

  “Uh-huh.” Snacker was clinging to her every word. “That is really interesting.”

  Interesting, my ass. Snacker just ate up Blythe’s talk about pornography. The little pseudolecture was vintage Blythe. She was managing to entice and even seduce Snacker by talking about sex and porn while still maintaining her academic air. I had to give her credit.

  “Hi, guys. Hope I’m not disturbing you?” I winked at Blythe.

  “Hi, Chloe.” Blythe smiled warmly, but she had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “You’re not disturbing us. Not at all. I can’t believe what happened to Leandra.” Jingling the silver bracelets on her wrist, she brushed her angled hair out of her eye. “I feel sort of bad that my last conversation with her was that tiff we had. She said that my breasts were so small that I looked like a guy. Granted, I’m no Pam Anderson, but she was really picking on me. The detectives seemed to really love that! Like I was so mad at her for what she said that I thought she deserved to die? But that’s what she’d said. And I told them I couldn’t have cared less what she thought about me. Did they give you a hard time, Snacker?”

  Snacker was still so hung up on Blythe’s having said the word breasts that I almost had to snap my fingers to pull him out of his fantasy. “Snacker!”

  “Oh! No, not really. Just a lot of questions about Owen.”

  “I hope you didn’t say anything stupid, Snack.” I was worried that Snacker and Owen’s feud was somehow going to make things even worse for Owen than they already were.

  “I didn’t!” he protested. “I just answered their questions.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m just a little stressed out for him.”

  “Of course,” Blythe sympathized. “Listen, when all this cools down, we have to hang out again soon. I know you’ve got finals coming up, but we need a girls’ night out again, okay?”

  “You’re on,” I agreed happily. Girls’ night out with Blythe was always fun. Because I had Josh, I didn’t mind that Blythe got all the male attention when we were out together, and I enjoyed helping her filter out the losers who hit on her.

  “Yeah, girls’ night out.” Snacker was almost drooling.

  Blythe laughed. “Which does not include you!”

  “It certainly does not,” I agreed. “I’m going to see how Owen’s holding up. Catch you guys later.”

  Owen looked almost as distraught as Gavin did, although for different reasons. Owen hadn’t suffered the loss of someone he’d cared about, but it had been far from easy for Owen to find Leandra’s body in his prized truck. It would’ve been awful enough to come upon a dead body anywhere at all, of course. But in a familiar and innocent place? A place he thought of as his own? Definitely not pleasant. Then there were the practical consequences. Owen was new at the Daily Catch and a new purveyor at the restaurants where he had accounts. His boss and his clients would understand what had happened, wouldn’t they? All the same, they’d hardly be happy that he’d failed to make today’s deliveries.

  But I didn’t get a chance to talk to Owen. Before I reached him, two uniformed officers approached him and led him off for what was certain to be a long, long interview.

  SEVEN

  When I finally got home, I was determined to shake off the emotional effects of the murder and get some studying done for my final exams. This was Wednesday, and my first final was on Tuesday. I needed to get kicking. My place was on the third floor of an old house in Brighton, a district of Boston, and the major selling point when I rented the condo from its owner had been the parking space out front that was included in the rent. Because the neighborhood was right near a lot of colleges and big universities, it was packed with students who were always fighting over the few legal parking spots on the street. I had a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a decent-sized bedroom that doubled as my homework area.

  I tossed my keys onto the coffee table in the living room and looked into the bedroom toward my desk, which had almost disappeared beneath mountains of papers and books. In my absence, a stack of articles about cultural influences on behavior disorders had toppled over and buried my keyboard. That course had been listed as Cult. Influences on Beh. Disorders, and I’d taken it to mean it was a class on cults. Still, cultural influences had turned out to be okay. Before finals, the one-bedroom condo had been small. Now it felt cramped and suffocating. I sighed and then went to the kitchen to throw on a pot of coffee. The caffeine I’d had this morning wouldn’t get me through the studying, research, and paper writing that I had ahead of me. While the pot brewed, I filled up my cat Gato’s bowl. While he ate, I stroked his silky black fur. In return, in typically cranky Gato fashion, he turned his head and bit my hand. Brat! I’ve heard that when cats bite, they’re showing affection, but the people who make that claim about cats probably say the same thing about dogs. Fido didn’t mean to chomp off a chunk of your arm and send you to the hospital for three weeks! He was just trying to tell you how much he loves you.

  I heated milk in the microwave, stirred in some sugar, and filled my cup to the top with steaming coffee. Despite the horrors of the morning, I had to get focused on school. What I’d been learning in my classes told me that I was in a posttraumatic state, but I was actually more worried about Owen, Josh, and Snacker than I was about myself. What’s more, I felt guilty about having left Gavin surrounded by employees who were probably failing to provide the support he needed. But I felt worst about poor Owen, who was probably still being questioned by the police. Leandra’s body had been in his truck, so I could understand why the police were interested in him. Still, there was no other connection between Owen and Leandra. I reminded myself that I was the one who’d actually discovered her body and tha
t, even so, the police hadn’t locked me up. Consequently, Owen would probably be released after he’d made a formal statement. Or so I hoped.

  Thinking of Owen reminded me that I needed to call Adrianna to see how she was handling the news about Leandra, Owen, and the truck. In fact, since we usually talk at least five times a day, I could hardly believe that I’d waited this long to call her. Yes, I was going to devote the entire day to studying, but a few minutes on the phone wasn’t going to interfere. Certainly not.

  Adrianna picked up after a few rings. “Hi, Chloe. How are you? God, I think I slept, like, eleven hours last night. My morning client canceled, and so now I don’t have anything until four. I might go take a nap. I swear, I’m never going to wake up until this baby comes out.”

  “Well, you sound awake now,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I had a cup of coffee, which I haven’t done in months. My ob-gyn said it was okay to have a cup a day, but this is the first time I have, and I think it’s hitting me pretty hard. So I’m exhausted and wired at the same time. How’s the studying going?”

  “I just got home, so I haven’t started yet, but I wanted to see how you were doing.” I assumed she wasn’t thrilled to hear about her fiancé’s body-in-the-truck problem.

  “How I’m doing with what?” she asked, confused.

  “Owen hasn’t called you?” I couldn’t believe it! What was Owen thinking? How could he possibly not have called Adrianna? He’d done nothing wrong; he was blameless. Why hadn’t he told Ade?

  Adrianna’s tone changed. “No, he hasn’t called me. What’s he done now? Quit his job and become a trapeze artist or something?”

  “No, he hasn’t quit.” I braced myself for her reaction. “Somebody died in his fish truck.”

  There was a very long pause followed by laughter so intense that Ade was in danger of pushing the baby out too early. “That’s ridiculous!” she sputtered. “In his fish truck? That’s impossible. How could anyone … Chloe, stop it. This is not funny.”